babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.

Residential schools called a form of genocide

While this is no surprise to babblers, it is the first acknowledgement of Canada's genocide by any official Canadian source. I hope that like the apology, this acknowledgement will fuel a broad conversation among Canadians about the corporate greed for land and resources, and the collusion of churches, governments, and police, that led to these abominable acts against children and families, throughout Canada's history. Greed has, and continues to deprive Indigenous Peoples of their ways of life, and now threatens us all with economic and environmental degradation and destruction. The chairman of Canada’s truth and reconciliation commission says removing more than 100,000 aboriginal children from their homes and placing them in residential schools was an act of genocide. The United Nations defines genocide to include the removal of children based on race, then placing them with another race to indoctrinate them. He says Canada has been careful to ensure its residential school policy was not “caught up” in the UN’s definition. "That’s why the minister of Indian affairs can say this was not an act of genocide,” University of Manitoba Friday. “But the reality is that to take children away and to place them with another group in society for the purpose of racial indoctrination was – and is – an act of genocide and it occurs all around the world.”Residential schools called a form of genocide

Read Dr. Peter Bryce's report. Is a 60% death rate high ehough and deliberate exposure to fatal disease sufficient to constitute genocide? Personally, I think so, even though there were plenty enough people back then standing around with their thumbs up their asses saying it was a travesty:

The definition of genocide doesn't require high death rates, though they certainly are suspiciously high. However Justice Sinclair is making the point publicly that the federal residential school program itself, as they designed it, was an act of genocide. There is no further evidence or justification necessary.
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.htmlIn the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: national, ethnical, racial or religious group, national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. The 'news' element here is that no official Canadian body has ever before used the unadorned word 'genocide' to describe Canada's policies and actions. Now we can too. It's a small word but a huge sea change in the understanding of Canadians.

"The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs will co-present Compelled to Remember, Sunday Nov 4 from 3 to 4:30 at the Native Canadian Friendship Centre of Toronto..."

'I visited Israel for the first time last year, and I was so overwhelmingly inspired. The Jewish people are the hstoric, indigenous people of Israel. For Canada's First Nations, Israel's story demonstrates how an ancient people can maintain their heritage while embracing the modern world - and in so doing, achieve self-determination.'

Deplorable. No surprise the CIJA has disappeared the indigenous Palestinian people, but getting indigenous peoples of Canada in on their Big Lie?
There are of course parallels between different genocides, but the genocide of Jewish people occurred in EUROPE. It was as "Western" as the genocide of Indigenous peoples of the Americas.